Pathways Out of a Pandemic: Women’s Voices Chart the Course

When it comes to COVID-19 recovery, women community leaders across the globe know the way forward.

“These narrators are a global ground force ready to lead the charge as we heal and rebuild. In many cases, they already are.”

To build a healthy post-pandemic future, let’s start by asking those who have been most devastated by it: women. If we don’t quickly raise the volume on women’s voices and power, putting them and their movements at the center of response and recovery, we will forfeit the world’s chances for an equal recovery.

Men overwhelmingly dominate decision-making for COVID-19 response, according to the British Medical Journal on Global Health. Despite women bearing the greatest burden of the disease, its analysis of 115 decision-making and key advisory bodies from 87 countries found that over 85% contain mostly men. Meanwhile, UN Chief António Guterres called this moment a “wake up call… unless we act now, COVID-19 could wipe out a generation of fragile progress towards gender equality.”

Guterres is not alone in urging transformative thinking that puts women at the front and center of response and recover. Executive director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says, “Women are now calling for a leapfrog to 50 percent representation, or parity in all spheres, including cabinets, corporate boards and throughout the economy, including women as beneficiaries of COVID-19 fiscal stimulus packages, engagement in all peace processes, and closing the digital divide.”

At World Pulse we intimately know the power of bringing women’s voices to the table. We provide a platform where women changemakers speak out and connect daily through a global online community representing women across 190 countries. These community leaders began sharing their urgent wisdom from across the globe shortly after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Over several months in 2020, we crowdsourced insights, recommendations, and stories of action from those on the front lines and analyzed more than 220 submissions from 33 countries. We synthesized their key themes and recommendations so that you can learn from these women’s experiences and heed their advice.

We now have a historical record of the local voices that forewarned of the impending multi-layered crisis that was about to befall women — and in quick succession, it sadly has come to pass: Women, who were already putting in an estimated value of $10 trillion of unpaid care work, are staggering under additional pressures and stress as 70% of the world’s health workers and the majority of family caregivers. This burden is on top of a pre-existing epidemic of gender-based violence with an estimated economic impact of $1.5 trillion USD. The pandemic is only exacerbating gender-based violence: household violence is estimated to be doubling in many countries. Australia registered a 75% increase in Google searches for help for domestic violence. The United Nations Population Fund estimates the pandemic will cause 31 million more incidents of violence and a surge of millions of more child marriages and early pregnancies, preventing countless girls from ever coming back to school.

The stories women shared to World Pulse spoke of the virus compounding the pre-existing sickness of violence, sexism, racism, and injustice. They spoke of their mental health and personal struggles to cope as well as the experiences of their surrounding communities.

Each voice frames her own context and story of survival:

• Deepa speaks of working with nomadic tribes and immigrant workers in India who have no home to go to when the police issue stay-at-home orders
• Harris shares how the collapse of roadside vendors in Uganda silently fuels child marriage
• Maeann shares of the impact of Covid on survivors of a January 2020 volcanic eruption in the Philippines that affected half a million people
• Ndi Veronica Ndum speaks on the unique harm of Covid restrictions for disabled people who use touch to feel surfaces or read lips hidden behind masks
• Cmnissen shares her terror of running from an abusive boyfriend, desperate, into the cold streets of Canada, with no access to help due to fear of contracting Covid
• Karin shares her outrage over the virus and the politicization of masks in the US as Black Lives Matter protests erupt in her city of Portland, Oregon
• Sampada shares an account of a cyber-criminal using the lockdown to prey on her family, and other vulnerable families, in Nepal
• Anne Chantal writes of giving birth with Sickle Cell Disease while quarantined in Cameroon
• Doctor Vie writes of the unequal enforcement of lockdowns in elite light-skinned communities in South Africa.

The despair is real, deep, and tragic. “Many have starved during this season, children and parents together,” says Ponela Kalonga from Malawi. “Coronavirus has not just affected the health of my community but also robbed our culture, potential, and opportunities. This is what has personally affected me.”

And while women shared of grief and suffering, they also shared their wisdom, their concrete recommendations, and the solutions they themselves are putting into action. Across the 33 countries we heard from, six themes emerged:

• Domestic violence cases are surging during the pandemic;
• Technology, digital skills, and reputable information are essential;
• Educational inequalities are intensifying;
• Immigrants, people with disabilities, nomadic tribes are uniquely and disproportionately impacted by the virus;
• Health care systems are neglecting reproductive and mental health services;
• Women’s leadership must be centered and their concerns prioritized.

Perhaps the biggest take away in listening to these voices is that these are not just wise ideas and recommendations. These narrators are a global ground force ready to lead the charge as we heal and rebuild. In many cases, they already are.

In fact, community leaders are frequently leveraging technology to boost their humanitarian and organizing work and doing more than their governments to serve their communities.

I think of Olutosin Oladosu who raised thousands of dollars to feed families in Nigeria. “Our leaders failed us,” she commands. “But I decided I will not fail women and girls.” As food insecurity increased in Nigeria in direct response to the virus and her government stockpiled international aid mere miles from her home, Olutosin took to social media to crowdfund across borders. She raised enough money to feed 10,000.

In India, there’s Tiffany Brar, a disability activist and founder of the Jyothirgamaya Foundation, who is now advising leaders and policymakers to give more in-depth care and consideration to people with disabilities when they design critical public health resources hosted online. “This lockdown has isolated me from the outside world, but it’s helped me make connections, given me knowledge, made me thrive, and made me really know the meaning of inaccessibility,” Tiffany says. “I’m in a better place to advocate for accessibility now.”

In Kenya, Eunice Owino hosts regular webinars for parents and girls about reproductive health over Zoom. “At our center, we bring technology into all social and economic issues,” Eunice says. “COVID-19 really helped us to fast track programs. I’m glad we were able to come out of our cocoons to support Kenyans.”

Taken together, these voices from diverse countries and regions show us that women are creatively mobilizing their communities to reach the most vulnerable. They are drawing strength from online communities, building mutual aid networks, and using radio, web, Zoom, SMS, social media, and more to organize and craft policy demands. They are reaching out across the wires and saying: Listen to us; we know the way forward.

In today’s digital age, there is no excuse to not listen anymore. Women leaders who have access to technology are grabbing hold of it to amplify the voices of others who do not. We no longer need to fly women to decision-making tables: technology can bring the table to them — and enable them to build new ones. The act of listening in new ways to community leaders who are digitally skilled and connected is a big part of finding solutions to the issues this pandemic has magnified. After we’ve listened we must fast track resources and power to boost the recommendations.

Ultimately, if these voices foretell our future, we’ll find that our definition of a successful recovery will be radically reoriented — pointing us to the world we’ve always dreamed of. If we pivot quickly, it’s a world more in reach than we might think.

For more examples of women’s leadership during the pandemic, see Her Power: 7 Grassroots Women to Watch. You can also download World Pulse’s latest crowdsourced report: Dispatches from the Pandemic: Grassroots Women Leaders on the COVID-19 Response.

Have you or someone you know accomplished extraordinary things for your community in 2020? Join World Pulse and share your story.